Megan is looking shocked, and I realize I’m insulting the Fates, which is a bad thing, but probably exactly what they expect, since they hate me so much.
I can’t see them, but I see that Daddy’s eyebrows have gone up, and his oversized nostrils have flared.
“I had to bring you here first to rescue you,” Daddy says. “Whether I like it or not, I have to get their permission to take you to Mount Olympus.”
“I. Don’t. Want. To. Go.” I speak each word slowly, like he’s the stupidest man in the universe. “Leave me alone.”
“You heard her,” Megan says. She looks at the Fates. “Let’s send her back.”
“No!” Daddy holds up his hand. Now the lightning bolts are traveling from fingertip to fingertip. “You don’t understand.”
“Enlighten us, then,” Lachesis says.
“Without threatening us with your magic.” Atropos waves her hand and suddenly Daddy’s fingers are wrapped in gauze.
“Hey!” he says.
“We’ll put you in a protective bubble if we have to,” Clotho says.
“This is
our
domain, Zeus,” Lachesis says. “You are not to use your magic here at all.”
Megan relaxes slightly beside me. I’m standing just a little behind her. I want her between me and Daddy. I’m probably the only one who would be caught by surprise if he tries something.
“You will tell us what this perceived threat is
right now
,” Atropos says. “Or you will leave.”
He glares at them. I think I hear the faint rumble of thunder, but all three Fates glare back, and the thunder dissipates.
“They are trying to make her into Helen of Troy,” he says softly.
The Fates gasp and clasp their hands to their mouths. They look appalled.
I’m just confused. Megan frowns at them. Apparently, she’s confused too.
“What are they talking about?” she asks me softly.
“My drama teacher cast me as Helen of Troy in a scene from
Doctor Faustus,
” I say.
“Do you have any idea who this woman was?” Clotho takes a step toward me. Her blonde hair falls about her face, and her blue eyes seem to glow.
“The most beautiful woman in the world,” I say.
“Oh, if Hera hears that,” Daddy says softly.
“Helen of Troy was
not
the most beautiful woman in the world,” Lachesis says. “She was a serious problem. She is one of the few magical we had to execute.”
Daddy looks at me, eyebrows raised in a
see?
kinda look.
“We hoped to never see her like again,” Atropos says.
“And now, these people, these
mortal
people, want you to emulate her?” Clotho says.
“This is unacceptable,” Lachesis says. “Much as it pains us, your father is right. You cannot stay—”
“Wait!” Megan says, holding up her hand. “You are rushing to judgment without hearing anything Brittany has to say. Tell them what’s really going on.”
My heart is pounding. The Fates
executed
Helen of Troy? For what? And how come I only know the myth? That’s not normal, is it? Or is it? I have no idea.
“My drama teacher—you know,
theater
—you know, it started in Ancient Greece…” My voice trails off.
Of course they know. They know better than I do. They were probably there when theater started.
They’re staring at me. Daddy is staring at me (and rubbing his hands together, apparently trying to take off the gauze).
Megan nods, as if expecting me to continue.
“My drama teacher, at school,” I say. “She wants me to be in a play. Just a few scenes, for some competition. She says I’m perfect for the role, but I don’t think I am. Anyway, I couldn’t talk her out of it.”
Atropos frowns. “You look nothing like Helen of Troy. Your sister Tiffany could be Helen’s identical twin, but you, you are the exact opposite physical type. Your teacher—”
“Has never met Helen,” Megan says, and she’s using that calm voice again. I’m beginning to think that’s a fake calm voice. Maybe it’s her therapy voice. “Remember, we’re dealing with mortals. They’ve never even seen a proper image of the real Helen.”
Clotho grunts. Lachesis mutters, “Huh.” And Atropos adds, “Humph.”
Apparently those sounds count as talking. I hadn’t really noticed that when we were Interim Fates because we tended to make surprised sounds at the same time.
Daddy looks at them, then at me. He lets his hands fall to his side. His eyes glitter.
Apparently, he sees an opportunity.
“See?” Daddy says. “These mortals don’t know what they’re dealing with.”
I glance at Megan. She gives me a small nod, then tugs on her sweatshirt again.
“Keep going,” she says softly.
I say, “The role isn’t even a speaking role. It’s just symbolic—”
“And we all know how potent symbols are,” Daddy says.
Megan puts a hand on his arm. “Let Brittany finish.”
Daddy looks at Megan’s hand as if he’s going to burn it off. But she doesn’t move.
See? Courage. I’d take my hand off Daddy’s arm in an instant if he looked at me like that.
I say, “The play is apparently a classic. It’s called
Doctor Faustus
, and—”
“That horrid Marlow,” Clotho says to her sisters.
“Almost as bad as Shakespeare,” Lachesis says quietly.
“I’ll never forgive him for ‘boil, boil, toil and trouble,’” Atropos says. “Never.”
They’re talking with each other and not paying attention to me.
Megan glances at me, sees (feels?) my distress, and says, “We’re not discussing Shakespeare. Marlowe was a contemporary—”
“We’ve
met
him,” Clotho says.
“Horrid little man, horrid,” Lachesis says.
“The things he says about magic and its practitioners,” Atropos says. She clucks and shakes her head.
“I know, right?” I say before I can stop myself.
They all look at me as if I’ve done something wrong. But I’m used to talking in this room, and besides, isn’t this meeting about me?
I force myself to continue. “I hate the play and I tried to get out of it, but if I want a good grade, I have to stay.”
The Fates all frown at me at the same time. I know that look. They usually don’t have that look. Tiff, Crystal, and I had that look a lot. The Fates don’t understand what I’m saying.
Clotho turns her piercing gaze on Megan. “What are these grades?”
“They’re the currency of school,” Megan says. “The better the grade, the better the student does.”
I look at her in shock. I’ve never heard grades discussed as if they’re money.
Megan gives me a tiny smile, as if warning me not to say anything.
“So,” Lachesis says to me. “If you perform this play, you will do well in your mortal endeavors?”
“One of them, I guess,” I say.
“And it is a
play
,” Atropos says. “Not an enchantment.”
I kinda think all plays are enchantments. “I—”
“It’s a play,” Megan says quickly. “I can get you the text if you like.”
Clotho snaps her fingers and the play appears before her, like a hologram. She waves her hand and the words fly past.
Daddy is watching all of us, and he’s not frowning. I would think he’d be angry that his plan got thwarted.
Unless he really and truly is worried about me playing Helen.
He can’t be, can he?
Lachesis leans over and helps with the text. Then Atropos touches some of the words. They glow, and I recognize the lines that Mrs. Schmidt quoted when she told me to take the part.
The face that launch’d a thousand ships…
“This is drivel,” Clotho says.
“And it has nothing to do with Helen,” Lachesis says.
Atropos peers around the words at Daddy. “Did you
read
this?”
“No,” he says, sounding offended that he had to read anything. “My daughter will not embody Helen of Troy.”
“Interesting word, ‘embody,’” Clotho says.
“Almost magical,” Lachesis says.
“Theater can be magical,” Atropos says.
See?
I mouth at Megan. She makes a tiny downward gesture with her hand, essentially telling me to be quiet.
“Now, do you understand my concern?” Daddy asks.
“Not entirely,” Clotho says.
“If we worried about everyone in theater, we would be worrying all the time,” Lachesis says.
“But this is
my
daughter,” Daddy says, “portraying
Helen
.”
“Yes,” Atropos says, but I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with Daddy or simply saying that to get him to say more.
Daddy being Daddy, however, thinks she’s encouraging him to say more. “And, have you seen where she lives? Have you seen the hovel they put her in?”
Hovel? Is he serious?
“Daddy,” I say. “The Johnson Family is doing the best they can.”
“They are not,” he says. “You have never had such a horrible place to live.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “You never saw where the wood nymphs put me and Tiff and Crystal when you had them take care of us. We didn’t even have a roof over our heads. We were living in
trees
. You didn’t care then.”
He shoots me a look that, had the Fates not scared him about the magic, probably would have had lightning bolts in it.
“I have already apologized for my earlier behavior,” he says unapologetically.
“Apologies are only effective if they are sincere,” Clotho says.
Daddy shifts his stance. He looks like a fighter. “I was sinc—”
“What is your real reason for bringing young Brittany here?” Lachesis asks Daddy.
“I want to rescue her from—”
“Your
real
reason,” Atropos says. “Not the lies.”
He glances at me. His entire expression is odd, as if he’s sad or desperate or worried. Is he that concerned about my role as Helen of Troy? Or is he that concerned about how I live? He can’t be, right? Because he’s never even seen the house.
Although he must have, because he’s talking about it. That creeps me out worse. He’s seen the house, and he hasn’t talked to me. Has he been
stalking
me?
I understand stalking. I watch TV, just like everyone else.
“Brittany,” Daddy says, and the fact that he says my name always sends a little shiver through me. For so long, I wanted him to recognize me, and now he is, and I can’t get over that.
Even though I want to. I don’t want to be that pathetic girl who takes crumbs of attention from her big powerful and neglectful father.
I want to be someone who is valued for who she is.
And I know that Daddy has no idea who I am.
But he thinks he does. He says to me, “This punishment they have inflicted on you, the loss of your magic, the loss of your
home
, it’s wrong.”
Punishment? What? No one is punishing me.
And then the rest of the sentence sinks in. He means “they” as in the Fates—they, not anyone-else-they.
I look at the Fates. They’re glaring at Daddy over the glowing words of the play.
“You punished me?” I asked them. “I thought we agreed that we’d have a normal life. That’s not punishment, is it?”
“I found a normal life trying,” Clotho says.
“But to us,
this
is normal life,” Lachesis says.
“Besides, your family came to us
after
your decisions were made,” Atropos says.
“That’s because we all decided, in my office, that the girls were being mistreated,” Megan says, moving herself closer to Daddy. “By
you
.”
He makes a face. “I elevated them to a position of honor. And when you all protested, I gave in to your silly demands. But this life that Brittany is living, it’s horrible.”
My mouth opens slightly? My life is horrible? Really? It doesn’t seem that way to me.
“Honey,” he says, “you need to defend yourself. They’re making you into someone you’re not.”
I’m having trouble focusing on any of this. I’m tired from my long day at the store, and my muscles ache in ways they never have before, and I’m getting a slight headache.
Besides, this library makes me really, really uncomfortable, and Daddy’s piercing gaze makes me even more uncomfortable.
It’s like he’s arguing in circles, and I’m getting dizzy rather than enlightened.
“What are ‘they’ making me into?” I ask.
“A pawn, a puppet,” he says. “Someone who does not think for herself, but does what everyone expects of her.”